Looking Down On You, Baby
by JustAGirl'xo
Summary: The story of Liam in Heaven, watching down on his Carla and reacting to everything that she is forced to endure, from Tony's reign of terror to Frank's brutal rape. How will he cope without being able to be by his lover's side, holding her hand? Some happy, some sad, some sexy and some comedy moments. Mainly Liarla, some Carter.
1. Eternal

**New fic. The basic concept is that this is the story of Liam, Paul and any other dead characters as they arrive in Heaven, describing their thoughts and reactions to what is happening to their loved ones back on Earth. Liam swears to watch Carla until the day she dies, but how will he cope as the love of his life is raped in front of his very eyes? In this fic, there is no 'Hell', even the nasty characters go to Heaven, otherwise they would all be in Hell together, the nasty bunch of cheats/murderers/rapists :P. This chapter may be a bit iffy because I hadn't decided on exactly what I wanted 'Heaven' to look like, so it may change at a later date. It starts on the night of Liam's death. Any questions, just ask. And Paul and Liam will delve more into the whole Liam/Carla affair, once the brutality of 'Bruv, you're dead' starts to heal for Liam :P**

**Enjoy!**

Chloe xxx

* * *

He woke up. He looked around. Nothing was familiar. In fact, everything seemed bizarrely light, the sky, the floor, all of the objects surrounding him, all gadgets and technological things, even he himself felt light, almost ghostlike. He struggled to think of his last memory. A car… A car racing towards him, screams, a face full of evil. And now he didn't know where he was. He wasn't in hospital, that was for sure. He had had that experience one too many times. He wanted Carla. He needed Carla. He felt scared without her. So when he heard a voice so recognisable that filled him with memories of protection and safety, he breathed a sigh of relief.

"Alright, bro? Long time no see." He looked up. There he was, his older brother, Paul, towering over him. It would have been a massive comfort to him had Paul not been dead for nearly a year and a half.

"What the hell is going on?" Liam asked, his eyes glazed with fear as he slowly clambered to his feet, his legs trembling.

"I didn't think I'd have to be explaining this to you quite so soon…" Paul mumbled, his voice laced with concern as he slung an arm around his brother's shoulders and led him over to what appeared to be a park bench, sitting him down before continuing, "This… This is Heaven. This is where everybody comes when they pop their clogs, there is no Hell. There's billions of people here, but you can only see the ones you knew before you died." Liam frowned, this flurry of new information too much for him to take in. He knew he was dead, he had known that as he watched the car hurtling towards him. Everything else was too complicated to digest.

"Is this forever?" he asked, not caring that his question was somewhat incoherent. Paul nodded, a small smile appearing on his face.

"The only thing that seems to be…" he replied, his eyes lighting up as a thought popped into his head, "Give me two minutes. I have something to show you…" Before Liam could ask any questions, Paul had vanished, and Liam was left alone. Carla's last words to him still stung like salt on an open wound, but he was comforted by the fact that he would see her again, his girl. He wondered if she was okay, wishing that he could console her and promise her that it wasn't over. He wished she was with him. He knew that it was a subject that he would have to breach with Paul later, the fact that he had fallen in love with his brother's missus, jumping into his bed less than a year after he'd died. It had always been Carla, he remembered the extreme bouts of jealousy he had felt at Paul's wedding and every day thereafter as he'd watched his brother and the woman he loved building their lives together. It was why he had always bickered with Carla, he had secretly hoped that she was feeling the attraction, too. Squinting into the distance, he could see that Paul was reappearing, in his arms, a bundle. Liam couldn't tell what that little bundle contained until Paul had reached his side. It was a baby.

"What…?" Liam trailed off, a flutter of butterflies in the pit of his stomach suggesting that he already knew that answer to his question.

"Liam, this is your son. This is Paul…" Paul grinned. He had looked after the little baby since he had appeared beside him; an exception was made for children. Children could see everyone in Heaven who was biologically a big part of their lives, uncles, aunts, grandparents, so that they had somebody to take care of them. Now, Paul, a tiny little body no bigger since the day he had been born, had his Daddy to look after him, too. Carefully, the bundle was transferred into Liam's arms, and he was able to hold his baby son close to his chest for the first time. Misty-eyes, he looked back up at Paul before asking him the questions that he had never had a chance to.

"Paul, why are you such an idiot? Could you not see what a beautiful woman your wife was, inside and out? She was well out of your league. How could you do it to her, or me, for that matter?!"

"I never slept with Leanne. Honest. I swear on my l-…" Paul trailed off, retaking his seat beside Liam before continuing, "Some things seem like a good idea until you look at them in retrospect. I never wanted to hurt her."

"You were lucky to have her, Paul."

"Yeah, found that one out yourself, didn't you?"

"How the hell do you know about that?!" Liam queried, his eyes growing wide as he worried about exactly how much his brother knew about his life since 6th June 2007.

"I know all about you and her. You never once stopped to think about me, did you? No, nothing was morally wrong about bedding your sister-in-law less than a year after her husband, your brother, had died. She was off-limits!"

"Funnily enough, I wasn't expected to be interrogated about it by my dead brother any time soon! I fell in love. I tried my best to stay away, but I couldn't, I couldn't bear to watch yet another bloke playing happy families with her and not even be able to kiss her goodbye. I adored her."  
"She thinks the same about you…" Paul responded, all bitterness draining from his voice as he recalled watching his wife in turmoil over Liam, her every move influenced by her powerful feelings for him.

"No, she didn't. I gave her a chance to run away with me and she turned it down," Liam scoffed, his cheeks reddening at having failed where Paul had succeeded. Paul simply shook his head.

"You know as well as I do that Carla is one massive riddle. Come here…" he replied, jumping to his meet and moving towards one of the technological-looking machines, hastily followed by Liam, who was still clutching his beloved son to his chest, protectively. Standing in front of the machine, Paul pressed his thumb against the screen, activating a keypad. Speedily, he typed the name 'MARIA CONNOR' into the search engine-style bar, waiting only a matter of seconds before a flawless-definition image of Liam's wronged wife flashed up on the screen, her pretty eyes stained with smudges of mascara, tears cascading down her cheeks. Liam frowned, deeply hurt by the image, his heart sinking as he heard her utter the words, "He's dead, and I'm expecting his baby."

"That's why Carla wouldn't leave with you. She knew that Maria was pregnant," Paul sighed, taking a step back from the machine as Liam, hypnotised, took his place, swapping Maria's name for another. His heart lurched as Maria's face was replaced by Carla's, her beautiful features tainted with hurt, her eyes without the light that made them so captivating. It was evident that she was absolutely heartbroken. She was curled up in the foetal position on her bed, her makeup smudged from her tears, though even that could not disguise her beauty.

"So this… I can watch her forever, until she's here with me?" Liam asked, his voice choked and quivering at the thought of a bond with Carla that could never be broken, even by death. Paul nodded, though when Liam looked deep into his eyes, he could see that they were grave.

"You can. But trust me, sometimes, you really don't want to do that…" Paul muttered, still somewhat hurt by the images of his wife and his brother that were etched into his brain forever, the day that he had watched the two people that he loved the most tumble into bed together having left an eternal scar, "That machine can be lethal, Liam. Be careful."

* * *

Liam had spent hours sat cross-legged in front of the machine, his eyes never leaving those of his girl, his Carla, who was clearly so devastated without him by her side, though she did exceptionally well to disguise it in public. He hated being the cause of her pain. He wished that he had some way to contact her, to tell her that he was okay and that they could be together again someday.

"Come on, bro. Leave it for now, yeah? Being dead doesn't mean you don't have to eat and sleep…" Paul sighed, having taken over the care of baby Paul due to his brother's mesmerised state; he knew it well, having experienced it himself in his first few weeks of death. Liam didn't reply. Food and sleep, none of that was important to him now. He knew that he would never let Carla out of his sight again, not until she was back his arms forevermore.


	2. Bittersweet

**Thank you for your reviews, guys, they mean a lot. I'm glad you're all liking the idea, I'm gradually going to build up to the exciting parts, I don't want to miss out any of the little things. :)**

**Chloe xxx**

* * *

Her hair was tied up, her makeup faded. She was appropriately dressed in black. She hadn't dolled herself up like she usually did, but Carla still looked a million dollars to Liam. He watched in awe as she bent forward and pressed her soft, adoring lips to one of the flowers that adorned and marked his place of death, a silent tear slipping down her cheek.

"Stepping out in front of that car…" she sobbed, taking a slow amble towards the centre of the cobbled road before Leanne grabbed her and pulled her into her comforting arms, "It's the only way we're gonna be together now, init?!" Liam choked back a sob of his own as he watched his girl so heartbroken, so torn. He hated seeing her in that state, even more so as it was all his fault. He'd been hooked on her all day, taking only the occasional break to care for his son. He hadn't been able to rid his mind of a comment that he'd heard pass Carla's lips earlier that evening: "I just don't love him like I love Liam". His overcome expression had drawn mainly 'I told you so's' from Paul, but Liam still couldn't believe what he was hearing. After she'd told him she didn't love him before he'd died, finalising their last conversation, he'd taken her words as the truth, despite Paul's insistence that he knew her better than anyone and could tell by her eyes that she felt for Liam what she'd never felt for him. Selfishly, a part of him wanted her to die. If she died, she would be with him. To watch her suffering, knowing that he had died thinking that she'd played a merry game with him, was like a knife in his chest, each uttered word of sorrow twisting it a full 360 degrees. He wanted to tell her that he was there, watching. He longed for her to know.

* * *

Liam was sprawled across the floor, his head resting on his hands, staring up at the endless sky above him. He didn't flinch as he felt a shadow overcast him and another person lay beside him; he knew exactly who it was. His suspicions were confirmed as Paul's voice shattered his daydream.

"You're not watching her," he observed, nodding his head towards the turned-off screen of the monitor.

"She's asleep," Liam sighed, propping his head up on his hand and rolling over to face his older brother, "She looks gorgeous when she's asleep, but she's not really doing owt. And as much as I'd love to watch Tony Gordon with his greasy little hands all over her while she's blissfully unaware, I had more important things to do. Paul needed feeding."

"I always need feeding," Paul joked, though he frowned as he noticed Liam's destroyed expression, "What's up, Liam? Apart from the obvious."

"I wished she was dead earlier. How sick is that?"

"Not very. I felt the same when I first started watching her, you get used to it after a while. Trust me, you've got higher hurdles to come."

"Enlighten me," Liam scoffed, finding it impossible to imagine anything worse than not having the love of his life by his side for the next sixty-odd years.

"Think about it, Lee, she's a gorgeous woman and she's not going to spend the rest of her life pining after you, as much as it looks like she is now. She's getting married. If not to him, then maybe to someone else, one day. You'll be watching some other man with her soon enough, and that's going to sting like hell. But again, you'll get used to it, and the months will fly by. And hey, at least you've got me here for company, I had to sit up here all on my tod until your little one arrived, I was dead bored," Paul replied, thinking back to the day his nephew had appeared and he'd been faced with the challenge and responsibility of looking after his brother's tiny son.

"How can you just talk about it like it's nothing? The thought of her with someone else makes me feel sick!" Liam exclaimed, his stomach churning at the very thought of Carla moving on, forgetting him. Paul shook his head.

"It just becomes normal. Something that happens. Liam, she's not going to forget you, if that's what you're worried about. She hasn't forgotten about me, I see her, sometimes, flicking through the old scrapbook that Michelle made us as a wedding present. She cries. It's really hard to watch, because all I want to do is give her a cuddle and tell her that I'm here, but I can't, I'm stuck on the outside of the fishbowl looking in and not being able to help. At least when you were around, I knew she'd be safe."

"I'm scared. I'm scared she'll forget me."

"I know you are…" Paul murmured, shooting his brother a sympathetic smile, recognising the signs of heartbreak from his own experiences of watching the woman he loved in bed with somebody else. Fortunately for him, he'd had a few months of preparation, whereas Liam was having to deal with it on top of all the fresh emotions brought along with death. Watching life continue without him; watching his friends and family having a good time; seeing memories that he should have shared with those he loved. Liam was horrified at the prospect of another man bringing up his child. He hadn't yet been able to watch Maria, knowing that her newly-discovered pregnancy would be a bittersweet experience for her.

"She's going to LA soon. I'll prefer that, when that bastard isn't anywhere near her. I do want her to be happy," he mused, longing to see Carla's stunning smile, the same smile that had drawn him to her many a time. Paul merely nodded in response.

"Get some sleep," he encouraged him, knowingly patting Liam's shoulder, "You can watch her again in the morning." As Paul rose to his feet and moved over to his own place of rest, Little Paul between them, Liam resumed his original position, his head resting on his hands, his eyes fixed on the slowly moving puffs of white in the sky. He missed her, more than he could even allow himself to imagine. He and Paul had discussed his relationship with Carla that morning, though Liam had remained uncharacteristically quiet on the situation. He hadn't been able to pinpoint the exact moment that he had fallen in love with her, he only knew that he had harboured deep feelings for her for the past twenty-two years. The only difference between then and now was knowing that he might not be able to touch her, to breathe in the scent of her expensive perfume, for a very long time.


End file.
